Ninja
by Clement Rage
Summary: Because it's not just a word, and rebuilding a nation doesn't come cheap.


_Written for Mengde for the Genesisawards Christmas Exchange. I'll admit to editing it slightly in the meantime._

**Ninja**

Yuffie Kisaragi hadn't expected to live to see her tenth birthday. A long time ago now, she'd watched a SOLDIER carve his way through her elite guard, watched her own aunt cough bloody foam onto sand, fingers twitching towards a knife that was suddenly too heavy to lift, leaving the White Rose of Wutai alone and defenceless but prepared to sell her life dearly. The SOLDIER with bloodstains on his boots played dead, and then tried to make friends.

And it had _worked_. Oh, once her nerve failed and she fled she'd spent months trying to get him killed in stupid quests over items, but the man had proved unkillable… right up until she started to want him to be. You never knew what you had until you lost it. And he'd taught her something valuable. Wutai had failed because it was weak. Fighting fire with fire left everything in ashes.

The lesson being: Don't try it at home.

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The art of combat practised by Wutai was indirect, and not learned in a day. It was not a question of raw power, and couldn't be, any more. After a visit from a Turk left half the capital in ruins once again, she fled the city – or town, now– with no particular destination in mind. She ended up in the middle of a forest near Junon, in the heart of enemy territory, and set her mind. If her attempts to save Wutai only caused more destruction, she would have to help it back on its feet another way. Finance had been among the President's favourite weapons, back before the Shinras gained enough power to act directly.

And that was when Wutai's princess began robbing travellers. She didn't usually kill them, although stripping a party of their gear in the middle of the wilderness likely amounted to the same thing. Small groups worked best, she learned. Lone travellers tended to be capable of their own defense, suspicious of strangers, and not carrying much of value, where big well guarded groups had too many variables to plan properly for. If anyone caught a hair of who she was, she wouldn't be the only one to pay for it, which meant leaving nothing to chance.

Playing lost girl in the woods had limited effect, she quickly learned. A certain kind of traveller was a soft touch, but another kind would see an opportunity. On one group too big to handle, she'd tried to split them up with a seduction, but the one who seemed amenable had been savagely beaten up by the others in the group. While that was enough distraction for her raid to succeed, she didn't want to count on it happening a second time. Lessons learned, she moved up to Shinra couriers. For those, a little more planning became necessary.

The basics were best. Caltrops took a few minutes with a knife to make, and while proper pit traps were difficult, shallow ones to break ankles and legs didn't require that much effort. And she'd been extensively taught about snares by Chekhev. It took a couple of weeks, but soon everything was ready. She dug out a bolt hole in a hollow tree and waited. It wasn't until months of nipping the couriers that she woke to voices.

The two travellers made more noise than she ever would have expected, and she slipped into their wake as they came within thirty paces of her tree, jumping from branch to branch without rustling a single leaf. Armed, armoured targets, weapons out and tracking their surroundings. Hunting. Direct contact wouldn't work here.

The first Shinra soldier stretched, his armour creaking.

"What are we doing here again?"

"Are you always this dozy, or are you doing it just to annoy me? How did you get sent on a mission you didn't even know the details of?"

"I'm a replacement. Jan's off sick."

"What happened?"

"Guard Hound bite. He didn't want it put down, so he didn't report it until his hand went green."

The other soldier hissed through her teeth. "Well, we've all been there. Poor guy." She stepped forward, right into a leg breaker pit trap. The snap of the woman's ankle echoed through the woods. The second soldier took a step towards her, and a snare hauled him up off his feet, level with a wasp nest. It was a painful death, but no more than Shinra lackeys deserved.

But the soldier had somehow retained a grip on his weapon, and pointed it upwards when he heard the buzz. White smoke burst from the barrel, and wasps pattered down to the forest floor like hailstones.

Yuffie cursed silently. She'd never seen anyone react that quickly to an ambush. Flicking the settings on his gun, the soldier opened up on the rope holding him upside down, slicing through it easily. He took the fall hard, but stumbled upright with gun in hand. A single snarled word reached her ears.

"Ninja." Her target had been to Wutai, he recognised her style. If he got back to Junon alive, there'd be reprisals against her town. She couldn't allow that.

Her thrown knife took the broken legged soldier in the throat, shutting up her howls of pain. Yuffie didn't need the distraction. The second soldier set his back against a tree, barrel tracking in a circle, but not neglecting up and down. Definitely a veteran.

Another knife found the bag of small stones hanging from the branch above the soldier, who threw up a hand to fend them off. Her last knife found his knee, but not in a disabling cut. Cursing, the soldier took off at a run, steel soled military boots crushing sharpened wooden spikes beneath his feet. Yuffie sat back, waiting for the scream.

It didn't come. A hundred feet of traps surrounded her den, but any more would've been too hard to keep track of going in and out.

She counted to ten. No scream. He'd made it out. She'd have to follow. Shinra had learned a long time ago the best way to deal with ninja. You didn't go hunt them in the forest. You attacked their homes, which forced them to defend them. She dropped from her tree and onto the blood trail from his knee. It led on and on to trickle under a fallen tree. Scouting around, she found that it didn't emerge the far side. She took a breath, and set herself to follow.

A bullet gouged a tree near her face, from behind and to the left. Yuffie Kisaragi spun and flung her shuriken on pure instinct, and the soldier only managed to prevent it from driving through his skull by throwing out his right hand. One of the Shuriken's tines sliced entirely through his palm, but the weapon clattered to one side.

The soldier gave a crooked smile as Yuffie stepped closer. "Close."

"Close." Yuffie agreed, retrieving her shuriken. The soldier had lost his SMG when she'd pinned his hand, and with the leg wound as well, he wasn't going to run very far. All he could do was use his sidearm "Move your hand, and die."

"Gotcha. Don't worry, a blade's quicker than starvation, I won't fight you. So, it's you that's been killing all the travellers? I was expecting somebody bigger." The soldier's left hand moved slightly.

"Sorry to disappoint you." She took a step closer.

"Shuriken, huh? Wutai style ambush. Pretty well done for one scrawny kid. You a half breed? Mom or Dad told stories around the fire about the Golden age that never was, and you decided to bring it back. Fuck… Five years in Wutai, and I get murdered by a ten year old wannabe."

"Shut up." She was twelve.

"What was he, Crescent Unit? Wutai is _gone, _and nothing you can do can change that."

"We'll see."

"What do you think this achieves?"

"Shinra will pay for what it has done to my home."

The soldier grinned. "Still a kid…" His hand moved.

She stabbed. She kept stabbing until she couldn't recognise his face.

After the evidence was dealt with, Yuffie stayed awake that whole night. If she listened hard, she could convince herself that she heard search parties in the woods.


End file.
